IAS officer leads by example, cleans toilet pit in Telangana
HYDERABAD: Senior IAS officer Parameswaran Iyer knows how to lead from the front.
When the secretary to the Union ministry of drinking water and sanitation got inside a twin toilet pit in a Telangana village and removed faecal matter with his hands, 40-odd bureaucrats and villagers watched him in awe.
The action of Iyer, who heads the Swachh Bharat Mission, also caught the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who lauded him in his ‘Mann ki Baat’ programme on Sunday.
“This toilet pit emptying exercise undertaken by the Drinking Water & Sanitation Ministry is remarkable!” Modi tweeted as well.
Iyer was on a visit to Gangadevipalli in Warangal district on February 18 with a delegation of 40 bureaucrats, including 23 principal secretaries associated with the rural development departments in various states, and UNICEF representatives.
The team was there to study the concept of twin-pit toilet technology that converts human excreta into manure and also helps eliminate open defecation.
The officers, on a training programme at the National Institute of Rural Development, saw the toilets in seven houses. Each toilet consists of two holes that are dug up and cemented and as one gradually fills up with faecal matter, villagers start using the second pit. The first pit is closed and the faecal matter in it decomposes and turns to manure. After six months, it is emptied and can be used again by the time the second is full. “While explaining this technology, Iyer wanted to know how the pit is emptied. He got into it and started lifting the dried up faecal matter that had turned into manure, using a shovel,” Warangal (rural) joint collector Prashant Jeevan Patil said.